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BFett wrote:
Or is is possible to spy on your own assets without knowing that they are your own?

what would that give?

maaaybe if you or them are completely jammed and dont have contact to the communications net to tell each other who is who...

hm...

you got me thinking with that actually...

but it's mostly rare edge cases instead of something that needs to be there (and would introduce a ton of extra headache)

Well, you could save the position of already scanned, stationary objects, like stations. And guess, that this must be the same station when you get back to that location later. And that this station is there until proven otherwise. That would make some interesting situations like "What the-? We've come out of hyperspace into a meteor shower, some kind of asteroid collision. It's not on any of the charts!"

JanB1 wrote:
...
Well, you could save the position of already scanned, stationary objects, like stations. And guess, that this must be the same station when you get back to that location later. And that this station is there until proven otherwise. That would make some interesting situations like "What the-? We've come out of hyperspace into a meteor shower, some kind of asteroid collision. It's not on any of the charts!"

Sound nice. Each ship/player/faction should have a "Map" with known locations and facilities. They can be sold and bought (obviously only copies) from other ships/players/factions. Each entry has a "last confirmed at <timestamp>" field showing when the object was last seen by the supplier/holder of the map. This would allow for Jan's nice scenario (seems like I heard those lines in StarWars somewhere), as well as "hiding" you own station until you tell somebody about it (eg. trade map fragments).

I think having a "passive" mode for both radar and iff would allow for nice stealth action. You can only see the grey blips in the passive scan area , if one of those has an "active" iff, you could see it's colour while you stay in the dark (and appear as gray for everybody else, marked "no iff").

Plofre wrote:
I think having a "passive" mode for both radar and iff would allow for nice stealth action. You can only see the grey blips in the passive scan area , if one of those has an "active" iff, you could see it's colour while you stay in the dark (and appear as gray for everybody else, marked "no iff").

That would give you the advantages of IFF-Off without the drawbacks though.
If you want to collect data with the least amount of detection the optimal choice is to go IFF-passive and gather all the IFF data without (necessarily) being noticed.
and obvious optimal approaches are boring.

When you have to have IFF turned on to collect the data from other ships and drop your cloak in doing so there is a choice:
Stay cloaked and collect less data or decloak, identify yourself and get a lot more data that way.

JanB1 wrote:
Well, you could save the position of already scanned, stationary objects, like stations. And guess, that this must be the same station when you get back to that location later. And that this station is there until proven otherwise. That would make some interesting situations like "What the-? We've come out of hyperspace into a meteor shower, some kind of asteroid collision. It's not on any of the charts!"

Cornflakes_91 wrote:it removes your stealth as soon as you are in the "maybe" section of their scanners.
theres some return, but nothing solid to target on or anything.

the more stealthy, the closer you have to be to be challenged for IFF at all.

aka IFF doesnt broadcast you, but only identifies you when you are already somewhat detected.

I am to presume that sensors ranges would be increased to allow for long distance identification?

Using an inverse square falloff on scanner strength, targets with higher stealth than your scanner could then be marked as a contact, but give no useful information as to what they are unless their AND your IFF is on.

If just one of you have IFF on, neither gain the information about the other right?

If that is the case, then all my issues with the system are alleviated. Stealth doesn't effect IFF, it effects detection, but you need to be detected at all before IFF will ping off.

However!

This does remove some of the features my earlier system gives.
Namely that Bountyhunting, Smuggling, Piracy, Police Work. All rely on the same technologies. Stealth and Scanning. (in this version)

You want maximum stealth and maximum scanning. This allows you to find targets early, and not have them find you if your OR their IFF is off. Which in all of the mentioned cases is important.

Smugglers and Pirates would have IFF off to prevent early detection when they scan a target.
Police and Bountyhunters have it on, but aren't looking for people with the IFF on.

Whereas mine meant that Scanning and Stealth were opposed technologies, as Smugglers/Pirates it was all about stealth, where Bountyhunters/Police was all about scanning. Meaning Pirate factions are creating newer and better Stealth, while Police/Bountyhunter factions are creating newer and better scanning modules.

Instantly giving us a nice bit of Asymmetrical game-play and technology progression.

Silverware wrote:
I am to presume that sensors ranges would be increased to allow for long distance identification?

Well, effective identification range would be increased with active IFF on both sides.
as you can IFF ships as soon as they enter detection range and not sensor-ID-range

Silverware wrote:
Using an inverse square falloff on scanner strength, targets with higher stealth than your scanner could then be marked as a contact, but give no useful information as to what they are unless their AND your IFF is on.

the range attenuation function is to be chosen for whatever fits the balance
All that matters is that df(r)/dr <0

All stealth does is decrease effective scanner ranges.
A stealthed target and an unstealthed target dont behave differently, except the ranges change.
A ship outside effective identification range is either just a blip or an IFFed contact.

Silverware wrote:
If just one of you have IFF on, neither gain the information about the other right?

Jup

Silverware wrote:
If that is the case, then all my issues with the system are alleviated. Stealth doesn't effect IFF, it effects detection, but you need to be detected at all before IFF will ping off.

Jup.
although It can effectively decloak you when you are cloaked and have your IFF on.
Pinging someone on your scanners.

Silverware wrote:
This does remove some of the features my earlier system gives.
Namely that Bountyhunting, Smuggling, Piracy, Police Work. All rely on the same technologies. Stealth and Scanning. (in this version)

You want maximum stealth and maximum scanning. This allows you to find targets early, and not have them find you if your OR their IFF is off. Which in all of the mentioned cases is important.

Smugglers and Pirates would have IFF off to prevent early detection when they scan a target.
Police and Bountyhunters have it on, but aren't looking for people with the IFF on.

Whereas mine meant that Scanning and Stealth were opposed technologies, as Smugglers/Pirates it was all about stealth, where Bountyhunters/Police was all about scanning. Meaning Pirate factions are creating newer and better Stealth, while Police/Bountyhunter factions are creating newer and better scanning modules.

Instantly giving us a nice bit of Asymmetrical game-play and technology progression.

Not really.
Pirates want low sensor signatures either way.
Either to minimise their range at which they show up as a ping at all on anyones scanners.
they also want strong scanning either way because it increases at which they can detect IFF beacons (in the broadcast model) or detect signatures (in the challenge-response model)

And police/bountyhunters want long scanner ranges to counter pirate sneakiness and to ping/read iff beacons from the longest range possible.
With a secondary requirement for stealth to prevent the bad guys from evading them.

Although stealth and detection are pretty much diametral because active scanners are bright :V

I wouldn't include this by default personally. While it seems like fun to use.
Imagine the AI using it against you. ALL THE TIME.

Fly into an allied sector, filled with allies. An allied patrol flies past.
Then shoots the shit out of you because they were pirates in disguise. They bugger off and you cant find them again (when you respawn), because they have allied IFF.

I wouldn't include this by default personally. While it seems like fun to use.
Imagine the AI using it against you. ALL THE TIME.

Fly into an allied sector, filled with allies. An allied patrol flies past.
Then shoots the shit out of you because they were pirates in disguise. They bugger off and you cant find them again (when you respawn), because they have allied IFF.

"Use against you" I'll grant, but I'm not so sure about the "ALL THE TIME" part. Where there are NPC pirates, there may also be NPC police looking for IFF spoofers.

It does mean there's a certain amount of danger when you jump into a new system. If you haven't obtained information about it (basically, some equivalent of the security rating as in EVE), then yes, it might contain nasty IFF-spoofing pirates. Serious question: isn't this a kind of exciting risk that people want from a space game that includes exploration of new places?

I expect other star systems will contain more law-and-order-maintaining factions and their NPC agents. If IFF spoofing -- or IFF transponders that are disabled completely -- show up everywhere all the time, I'd say that's not a feature; it's a bug.

But I'm not sure it's a bug that inevitably happens just because NPCs can use IFF spoofing, too.

I really don't want to see IFF spoofing for the exact same reasons Silver has outlined. I think it would kill the fun of the game rather quickly. Besides, there should be a number of ways to do equally annoying things without giving the player the impression that the UI is bugged.

We have reputation systems which allow the player to become trusted over time by different groups. There is also cloaking, and other research driven ways to do equally tricky things.

I get the point; if NPCs used IFF spoofing frequently, I'd become annoyed, too. I'm questioning that "frequently" assumption.

Let's suppose for a moment that Josh would even allow something like that -- why do you believe that there would not be other aspects of the game, either deliberately coded or emergent, that would operate to keep IFF spoofing (or disabling) to a generally rare occurrence?

Again: sure, there might be star systems where spoofing is relatively more common (because no NPC cops). Er... don't go there unless you're looking for that kind of challenge?

In systems where commerce is more functional, I would expect the NPC factions there would themselves be actively suppressing the use of IFF spoofing (and disabling), again, either because they're programmed to do so or because that behavior emerges just as organically as some NPCs "deciding" to use spoofing.

Ultimately, of course, if spoofing were implemented at all, there is no reason why it couldn't be turned off for anyone who feels that any amount of it is too much. Or maybe Josh doesn't implement it at all, but someone creates this as a mod... in which case, no one is required to install it.

So did this allay the concerns that spoofing would be used constantly against the human player? I see no reason to assume it would be, but I'm open to hearing why people think it's likely.

Well that's the real question isn't it. How does the player identify a ship which is using an IFF spoofing device and can these ships be tracked? The problem with spoofing is that I don't really see a way to actually detect it before it's too late.

Say your scouting a system and you know that if your IFF is off you'll likely attract attention the moment you are seen. So, you switch out your IFF to that of the hostile faction so you are now spoofing them. So long as you don't do anything suspicious you could remain in the system indefinitely without being suspect.

One way to counter this is to assign unique IFF to specific ships. So a ship's ID has to match the IFF signature it is putting out. This would assume then that ship ID's can't be changed.

Other than that, IFF spoofing likely needs to be either extremely expensive (financially and ship computer wise) or something that can fail if used for extended periods of time.

I wouldnt differentiate between a ship's ID and IFF in the unspoofed case.

For finding out the true identity it could just be a scannable "component" with a lower detectability than the claimed identity.

Get a good look, targeted or untargeted, and its out.
(its easier in a targeted fashion).
The same way the identity is scannable with IFF off.
Maybe with multiple levels in the actually scannable features (general ship class, exact ship class, ship identifier, allegiation identifier)

A fake IFF could be a salvaged object, so to get one that matches your ship well would be relatively hard to come by.
A freighter id from somewhere is easy, freighters disappear in asteroid belts.
But getting a battlecruiser ID is hard without starting a war first.
a current one, that is.

Last edited by Cornflakes_91 on Thu Feb 01, 2018 7:41 am, edited 1 time in total.